Computer specs

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gospel

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Setting up a home studio to record my gospel group. I have picked the soundcard (M- Audio delta 44), but have not purchased a computer yet. The computer will be only for the studio as I have another for internet, work, etc. The system requirements for the delta 44 are P3 500+mhz and 128 SDRAM. Some people I have talked to including some computer guys where I work say I should get a P4 (as fast as I can) 512 RAM and two 60gb harddrives. I am only going to be recording 3 vocals and pre-recorded soundtracks. What do some of you think? Maybe some of you have used similar cards before. Any input will be appreciated. I just can't afford what these guys are talking about.
Another question I have is why won't a Celeron 1.2ghz processor work? It is a lot cheaper than the others.
 
I would go for an AMD Athlon or AMD XP processor. You'll get more bang for your buck compared to a Pentium. Do a search on "CPU" "Processor" "AMD" etc. and you'll find lots of advice and opinions. Be warned, the AMD vs. Pentium debate is almost as contentious as PC vs. Mac.

Other ideas to cut costs:

You can also get less RAM. I have 256 Meg and it works just fine for me.

Two hard drives is a good idea. Get a big one (60 Gig sounds good) that works at 7200 RPM for your audio data. The other drive can be smaller and slower (and cheaper). I have a 10 gig, 5400 RPM that is fine.
 
A Celeron will work, I use one (different card though).

The main thing about system speed is that it allows you to use more effects plugins at once (they hog CPU power). You can certainly get by with a lesser machine, but it may create more work for you. If you want to use more effects than your CPU can handle, you have to back up the track, apply the effect destructively (permanently), and go from there. If you find later in the mixing process that you want to back off some of the reverb you applied destructively, you'd have to restore your track, re-create the backup, re-apply the effect, etc...

If you're sure you're not going to use more than 3 vocal tracks with 2 tracks of basic background music, and you're not going to need to get crazy with effects, then you'll probably be fine with a lesser machine. Just beware, if your plans change, it'll amount to a lot of frustration.
 
Pentium 4 vs AMD, the battle of the chips.
Well personally I choose Pentium 4.
Many people would say AMD, however they are more for Gaming systems. The Pentium is much more of an applications system. The only reason the AMD is a little faster for the games, is because the software is written specifically for the AMD, instead of the P4. However in the future that will turn itself around and P4 will be a faster game chip. But for now since you are using it for applications I would go with a P4 or if you choose an AMD MPXP, but either way you will not be dissatisfied.
-DAN
 
Actually the AMD XP chips are faster because of fast Floating Point operations compared to P4 of the same Mhz, which cause faster proccessing.
 
uh oh. I smell a LOOONGG thread starting.

I'll take my Commodore 64 over your AMD and Pentium crap any day!
 
I really sorry if I'm intruding. I'm going to be recording with my computer also, so I'm prodding through the board in search of some info. I was just wondering: What good is having two hard drives? I have a 60gig and figured that would be enough. What would another one do?
Again, sorry if I'm intruding, I just happened to read thia and I was curious.
 
gospel said:
The system requirements for the delta 44 are P3 500+mhz and 128 SDRAM. Some people I have talked to including some computer guys where I work say I should get a P4 (as fast as I can) 512 RAM and two 60gb harddrives. I am only going to be recording 3 vocals and pre-recorded soundtracks. What do some of you think?
Click to expand...

3 vocals and a soundtrack? You'll pull that off easily with that P3 500, 128mb memory and any 2 years old 5400 rpm hard disk.

Some computer guys just don't know what it takes to record. And really, it isn't a lot hardware-wise.
 
Forte said:
I really sorry if I'm intruding. I'm going to be recording with my computer also, so I'm prodding through the board in search of some info. I was just wondering: What good is having two hard drives? I have a 60gig and figured that would be enough. What would another one do?
Again, sorry if I'm intruding, I just happened to read thia and I was curious.
Click to expand...
I'll explain this without making fun. Recording music uses alot of hard drive space. This means the hard drive neads to do ALOT of read and writing for recording purposes. If you have only one hard drive then not only does you're one hard drive have to cope with music but it also has to deal with running the program and the operating systems meaning it has to move back and forth all over the hard drive. This makes things slow and unstable. By using two hard drive you can have one the takes cares of programs/OS and one that just takes care of your music files. Maybe for a maximum of 5 tracks one hard drive could be okay but if you want to record anything serious then a second hard drive is VERY important.
 
The only reason the AMD is a little faster for the games, is because the software is written specifically for the AMD, instead of the P4.
Click to expand...
Huh? Where did you get that?
 
...Um thanks. I did use the search, that's how I got here... believe it or not, the majority of posts in this forum deal with recording, not computers. If you do a search on why it's good to have more than one hard drive, you wont really turn up with much. Try it....

Anyway, so rather having a really big hard drive for everything, it's better to have two seperate ones? Hmm, you'll have to excuse my ignorance, I really had no idea. I thought that if a hard drive was big enough, it would be fine.

So then, about how many gigs would be good for recording, and how much would you need to run OS? My computer won't just be a DWA I've got some games, web stuff, and I also work on some visual art with my computer. Neirbo has a 10gig, is that one running the OS or the recording stuff?
 
Usually the main hard drive is for almost everything: operating system, recording software, software plug ins, any non-recording software etc. The second drive is for nothing but audio data. That way, while your first drive is running Windows, accessing files etc., your second drive is free to do doing nothing but read and write audio data.

This is also why it is highly recommended that your second drive be a fast one (7200 RPM). A fast hard drive that is doing nothing but transfer audio will get you many more simultaneous tracks than a single, slower drive.

The size drives you need depends on what you want on your computer. For me, 10 Gig for the main drive is plenty to hold what I want (Windows, Sonar, Microsoft Office, plus a few random things) with room to spare. If you want to store photos or music too, 10 Gig may be too small. With harddrives so cheap now, you may as well get at least 30 gig for the main drive, and maybe 60 or 80 for the audio drive.
 
Gospel and Forte,all the advice you have been given is very good,but here is my take from my experiences ,hope it helps.

Todays 7200rpm hardrives(Maxtor,Ibm,Seagate)all have low seek time and high sustained transfer rate models,just do your dd and find the one with the best specs.For me it was Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 40 gig,8.7ms seek,around 28mb/s read writes give or take in diskbench.

Just one of these drives served me well in a p3-800/cusl-2 running sonar and pro audio 9. 24 tracks easily,not even straining the drive. As long as your max recording resolution will be 24bit 44k your harddrive will not be the bottleneck.Start out with one good fast 7200rpm, partition it into 2 or 3 partitions,when you run out of room,or decide to mess with 24/96 then just add another one.

That said,my third daw a 1.2g t-bird does have two 40 gig maxtors,the sustained transfer rate went up to 31mb/s,woo-hoo!
Plugins, your recording application,24/96,if anything, will be what brings your system to it's knees.

On the other hand if you have no budget constraints,and want to build one badass studio daw the technology is here and now.
 
neirbo said:
Usually the main hard drive is for almost everything: operating system, recording software, software plug ins, any non-recording software etc. The second drive is for nothing but audio data. That way, while your first drive is running Windows, accessing files etc., your second drive is free to do doing nothing but read and write audio data.

This is also why it is highly recommended that your second drive be a fast one (7200 RPM). A fast hard drive that is doing nothing but transfer audio will get you many more simultaneous tracks than a single, slower drive.

The size drives you need depends on what you want on your computer. For me, 10 Gig for the main drive is plenty to hold what I want (Windows, Sonar, Microsoft Office, plus a few random things) with room to spare. If you want to store photos or music too, 10 Gig may be too small. With harddrives so cheap now, you may as well get at least 30 gig for the main drive, and maybe 60 or 80 for the audio drive.
Click to expand...

Adding a second HD will not improve performance if you put it on the same channel/chain as the 1st drive. Limitations in the IDE bus only allow access to one drive at a time on the same ribbon. If you are going to add another drive, it should it be on a separte channel/chain/ribbon.
 
I see. Well, when you say that one hard drive is just for your music files, do you mean for the software also? Or just for storing the .wav's, .MP3's, .MIDI's, etc...? 60gigs seems like it might be over kill. I have one 60gig hard drive and I'm only using about 5gig for everything - including music. Ofcourse, I haven't done too much, but I could never imagine using 60 - I could use more RAM though....

So am I missing something? I mean, right now I'm not using too much hard drive space, but do you think that in the future I will? I would hate to get a small harddrive now, thinking that I didn't need a big one, and then realize that I dug myself in a hole. When I bought this 60gig HD I thought I'd have enough to last me a life time...!
 
AMD vs Intel - just a quick thought:

I work in the IT field with both AMD and Intel systems - something to keep in mind for "audio/recording" computers is that the AMD's run really hot (generally requiring a second fan for cooling the system) compared to the Intels - although minimal, this does add more 'white' noise to your recording environment...

Anyway, just something to consider
 
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